Category: Text, English, English literature, Yale University

For the last decade of the nineteenth century and at least the first two decades of the twentieth, Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936) was one of the most popular writers in the English language, in both prose and verse. He was among the last British poets to command a mass audience, appealing to readers of all social classes and ages. Although his few novels, except Kim , were only a mixed success, in the medium of the short story Kipling extended the range of English fiction in both subject matter and technique and perhaps did more than any other author in the English language to blur the division between popular and high art. Rudyard Kipling: The Books I Leave Behind , an exhibition held in 2007, was the first comprehensive show to be presented anywhere in over fifty years.